Kitchen details

I took the day off to finish a few things in the kitchen. The island needed some trim pieces on the side and we needed to install the electrical before the countertops get installed. We now have a ton of outlets to choose from. There are two 36 inch strips under the cabinets and an outlet on each end of the island. Everything blends in nicely. Hopefully tomorrow we will have the countertops picked out and ordered. I also have a new iPhone so the photos will be much better from now on. It's still a little messy but we are getting closer to the finished kitchen.

Cabinets installed

The last two cabinets took us a few extra hours of planning, but they are now installed. Both the fridge cabinet and pantry required exact filler strips and left zero room for error. To help us out we bought a new toy yesterday in the form of a Rigid table saw. Just what we needed! The kitchen turned out better than we had in our heads and the countertops aren't even in yet. The design is very open and working in it is great. Everything is within a step or two. The only problem is when the sun is out it's almost too bright. Not a bad problem to have, but we may need to find some shades for the french doors. Next up we need to put up the crown molding, cabinet pulls, backsplash, molding around the rest of the room, and a few lights and we'll have the first finished room in the house!

No more paper plates

Another milestone was passed this week. We finally have a sink with running water in the kitchen! There's not much countertop space, but we do have a working disposal and dishwasher now. No need to use paper plates and plastic utensils any more. I hooked up all the water lines and the drains the other day. The faucet is from the old kitchen so it will suffice until we get our new one. Last night the vent hood was sealed up as well. We also started unpacking all the old cabinets and various boxes in the basement where our kitchen stuff is stashed. This weekend we'll finish off the pantry and fridge cabinets to complete the kitchen. Plus we're getting rid of our old kitchen by selling it on Craigslist. Should open up some living space around here and start feeling like a home again.

Building the island

After work today I finished building the kitchen island. First I had to build a frame to jack up the 30in wall cabinets to match the 34.5in base cabinets. Then some clamping, shims, and screws later there is now an island waiting for a slab of stone.

Almost there...

The kitchen is coming together nicely. We started the island and finished one half of it. There are three wall cabinets (1 foot rather than 2 foot) going opposite this row to make the island a total of 8.5 feet by 3 feet. A lot of measuring and leveling today so it made for some tedious work, but the results are great. We're at that stage in the renovations where most of the work we do is the finished product everyone will see. It makes for some good blog updates. All we need is a better camera as my Blackberry is taking awful pictures lately. I'll finish the cabinets this week and we'll be ready for countertops next week.
It's hard to believe that just a few days ago these cabinets were in flat boxes waiting to get assembled. We can't wait to get our kitchen back!

Kitchen taking shape

I finished putting together all the kitchen cabinets today. It was definitely more time consuming than I realized, but worth the cost savings. They aren't as easy to put together as IKEA stuff that's for sure, but they are way more solid. The cabinets are J&K in an espresso finish. All of them are solid hardwood so they should last a long time. We came way under budget on the cabinets (over half). Even with the splurge in appliances we are well under the budget we initially had allotted for the kitchen. We have the countertops narrowed down to a couple choices so the kitchen should be usable in a week or two.
First two cabinets are on the wall. Tomorrow we should have the other wall cabinet set and the island built. There's a big pantry at one end so that may require some help to hold everything together while it's built in place, but everything is progressing nicely.

Looks can be deceiving

The cardboard boxes laying all over our kitchen floor may not look like much but someday soon, they will be our kitchen cabinets!  They arrived yesterday and we've started putting them together.  Cabinet assembly was billed as an easy DIY but it's not quite as simple as advertised.  It's a little tricky to get everything lined up just right and we've been using the brad nailer, the 18 gauge nailer, and a lot of wood glue to make sure they stay together!  We'll start the install this weekend and I can't wait to see how it all comes together.